The following is an edited transcript
of remarks by Brenda Stokely,president of AFSCME, District Council 1707,
in New York City, one of the key organizers of the Million Worker March this
weekend in Washington, D.C. She was interviewed by Amy Goodman, host of the
daily radio and television news program “Democracy Now.” Brenda Stokely is also co-convenor of New York Labor Against the War and a member of the Interim National Council
of the Labor Party. Other Labor Party leaders are supporting the March,
including Donna Dewitt, head of the South
Carolina state AFL-CIO, who will speak at the March
on October 17.

Mark Dudzic,
national organizer of the Labor Party, issued the following statement about the
Million Worker March on behalf of the party’s Interim National Council:

“The Labor Party supports the goals
of the Million Worker March. We salute our many affiliates who will use this
day to mobilize members around a pro-worker political agenda as well as all of
our members and affiliates engaged in grassroots organizing to move this agenda
in the post-election period.”

AMY GOODMAN: We turn to Brenda Stokely, who is one of the key organizers of this weekend’s
Million Worker March in Washington,
D.C. Can you respond to the
candidates on labor and talk about how you’re organizing?

BRENDA STOKELY: Well, we are — this is definitely a rank and file
grassroots organizing movement. It’s — I’m almost 60, and I haven’t seen anything
like this since the 1960s in terms of the response. We’re having difficulty
even responding to people. We were organizing the buses. We all got commitments
for those who could provide buses, to provide seats, but now we have to come up
with whole buses. Danny Glover has been very instrumental in helping us do
this, as well as other people, because we are responding to immigrant groups
which have no money and we’re providing whole buses for them to get there. We
were responding to shelters that have no money; these are displaced workers.
Unfortunately, none of the internationals with the exception of two
international unions have come forward to support; as a matter of fact, they
have done everything to undermine this particular effort. The only two international
— now there’s three — has been N.E.A., and the postal workers, A.P.W.U., and
now the building maintenance and railroad workers, that have recently endorsed.
[The call for this march came from] ILWU Local 10 out of San
Francisco, which we fondly refer to as the anti-apartheid local
because they’re the ones who shut down the whole West Coast and refused to
unload cargo from South
Africa during the anti-apartheid movement.
This call came from them. It came from their local. Their own international is
not supporting it. And what they [top union officals
of the AFL-CIO] are trying to do is gear everybody and lock everybody’s hands
to the Democratic Party and to Kerry and not independently provide a space for
workers to express their own concern and their own agenda. This is a beginning
of a movement to mobilize people, as Howard Zinn was
talking about [also on the October 14 “Democracy Now” program], the kind of
movement that’s needed. Well, this movement is being built right before our
eyes. It raises — it poses a lot of questions, both within the anti-war
movement and also within organized labor as to why they [the top union
officials] would actively not — not in terms of unconsciously but actively
oppose such a movement of rank and file members. Why they’re not — this
movement includes people that are not in unions. As we all know, less than 12 million
people are in unions. So we’re appealing to people that are unorganized as well
as people that are organized. And the response is unbelievable. People — their
view is, why hasn’t this happened before? One person even said to me, an
old-time retired fireman in Harlem — we were postering — he said, “You know, labor should have had
something during the R.N.C.” I said, “Dear, labor did have something during the
R.N.C. on September 1.” He said, “I didn’t know anything about it.” I said, “Because
one, they excluded people that were not in unions. They excluded retirees. And
they excluded the key issues that were relating to workers.” So we think our
demands are very important—for national health care for all, for workers’
rights, because workers are being battered whether they’re in unions or not.
And they talk about the increase of numbers of people in new jobs. Those jobs
are mainly temporary jobs, part-time jobs, per diem jobs, fee for service jobs,
have no benefits, no union representation. These are not the kind of jobs we
are talking about, jobs with a living wage, not a minimum wage. We are talking
about housing issues. All of the issues that face working
communities every single day.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I’d also like to ask Brenda, people who want to attend
the Million Worker March, how can they contact the organizers and get more
information?

BRENDA STOKELY: Well, in New
York City they can call 212-219-0022, extension 5185.
We have buses in every borough. And so we welcome people to come and get a seat
and go down with us.

AMY GOODMAN: People around the country are coming?

BRENDA STOKELY: Yes, around the country. And also we’re going to have
— an important aspect of the march is that they’re going to be organizing tents
so that people will not just be rallying, but they will also leave with an
agenda and a plan and connect to national activities, and campaigns. So, we
invite everybody to come and participate.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Brenda Stokely, I want
to thank you very much. We’ll have links on our website at
democracynow.org.
Brenda Stokely is president of AFSCME, District
Council 1707 in New York City, one of the key
organizers of the Million Worker March this weekend in Washington, D.C.